Minority advocates blast Arbitron “people meter”

Will Arbitron's new Portable People Meter hurt minority broadcasters? The FCC …

Should broadcast ratings firm Arbitron call its new audience measuring tool the "people meter" or the "people ignorer"? That is the question for some minority radio broadcasters, who charge that Arbitron's Portable People Meter (PPM) system for measuring how many consumers listen to a station "grossly undercounts and misrepresents" African Americans, Latinos, and other minorities. The Federal Communications Commission has asked for public comment on the request of an anti-PPM activist group, the PPM Coalition, for an inquiry into the problem.

"Unless the Commission acts now," the 'PPM Coalition' wrote to the FCC on September 2, "the current PPM methodology will most likely wipe out half of the nation's minority broadcasters." The alliance consists of the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters, the Spanish Radio Association, and nine other groups and companies.

Faster and more precise?

The PPM is a mobile phone-sized device that a participant agrees to wear through the day. It's a competitor with Arbitron's hallowed "diary" system in which consumers keep written track of their listening habits. The application picks up inaudible ID codes in radio signals streaming near the person who wears the receiver. The app then transmits the intel to Arbitron via the household telephone line, which incorporates it into the firm's database of listening habits. Advertisers use Arbitron listening statistics to decide from which stations to buy air time.

The company's literature on PPM contends that the system will deliver faster and more accurate statistics on radio listening. In addition, the technology will demonstrate a much higher overall radio audience than the diary system. "The PPM indicates that a typical radio station often reaches twice as many listeners compared to current measures of the audience," Arbitron says, and adds that it will more easily track the listening habits of children.

The metrics firm also notes that the PPM system is voluntary. Stations can decline to add the ID encoding stream to their broadcast.

Or a system with too many blind spots . . .

But the PPM Coalition charges that the new technology is full of flaws that have and will undercount minority audiences, doing damage to the amount of advertising that minority stations can sell. Its sample sizes are too small, PPM says—about 66% smaller than diary sizes. The petition cites a July 2008 sample in Los Angeles that included only 34 African Americans reporting on a daily basis in a market of about 11 million people. This paucity of minority subjects has big implications for other diverse cities, like Philadelphia, where Arbitron only uses PPM to track listening habits.

The PPM system also tends to recruit relatively few cell phone-only households (CPOs), the petition complains. Only about 6 percent of PPM samples tap into CPOs, which tend to include young adults, minorities, students, and the poor. Low-income listeners rely on mobile phones because they move frequently.

In addition, women are sometimes reluctant to wear the meter, the petition asserts: "Arbitron appears unwilling to acknowledge that the device is not user friendly to women, since it is designed to be physically worn on the body and women are not generally inclined to clip items to a belt or carry bulky items in pockets."

The PPM Coalition also wants to know why Arbitron's new system has not received accreditation for all cities from the Media Ratings Council, which, at the behest of Congress, maintains standards for media statistics providers like Arbitron and Nielsen. The MRC has not disclosed why it has backed Arbitron's use of PPM in Houston, Texas, but denied approval to the firm's methodology in New York City and Philadelphia. Despite this, Arbitron plans to go ahead with PPM in eight markets this month, including Chicago, San Francisco, San Jose, and Riverside-San Bernadino, California.

These groups and Arbitron have been debating these concerns for quite a while. Arbitron sent Ars a response asserting that it doesn't think the FCC has jurisdiction over the company's operations and therefore lacks the authority to launch a probe. "Nevertheless, we are committed to continue our voluntary meetings with the FCC," the statement says.

The reply also reiterates the firms' belief that PPM's methodology is far more accurate than the diary system, which relies on recall: "Arbitron’s role as an independent research company is to provide stations and advertisers with information that is based on the actual behavior of radio audiences. That is what PPM delivers today."

The public can weigh in on the PPM Coalition's request through September 24 and reply to comments through October 6.

Matthew Lasar / Matt writes for Ars Technica about media/technology history, intellectual property, the FCC, or the Internet in general. He teaches United States history and politics at the University of California at Santa Cruz.